You can "understand" the general idea but at the end, there are some differences. You need to have a creative mind to guess that this word means this...
For example, when you take the Squadra Azzura in Italian, the first word for the team is closer to the English squad, but Azzura is closer to anything azur (blue) in French, though it's just a color not often used in its adjective form in French.
As a French, I can often read Italian newspapers, especially sports news
.
It's harder for Spanish newspapers and definitely not possible for Portuguese.
I know people say Spanish should be easy for me but for some reason, I don't really get what they're saying.
As a "lose" German speaker I can follow a bit Dutch and when I read Swedish, I recognize some words. But still hard.
I am also Korean by ethnicity and there, it's really not useful cause I can't really understand any of the Japanese or Chinese "natively".
When you write in Chinese characters, you can "understand" based on the meaning but not pronounce it.
When I "hear" some of the Japanese words, they make sense to me based on the Korean (and the Japanese colonization era which introduced some of their words in the language).
It's a complicated world but I suppose knowing a lot of language should be a fantastic way to get to know people, and discuss!